


Growing Up

by cendri (crankyoldman)



Category: Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankyoldman/pseuds/cendri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're either all in or not. (Spoilers for the ending of the movie and you know, most of the plot. So watch it before reading this.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vyola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyola/gifts).



He focused right on the target, not letting the shaking that his hands wanted to do become an actuality. He kept both eyes open, just like he was told and ignored the desire to close one. Just holding it was enough for him to understand why Mr. Goodkat didn't like to waste his talking, why there was always a control. Suppression, control. Yeah, it made sense. The clouds parted and there was a ray of sunshine shining down on him and the handgun he was expertly cradling.

The crack of the shot was enough to pull him right out of that happy place and back on earth. Some field in the middle of Oklahoma.

"You flinched, threw off your whole shot."

It had taken him years, _years_ to finally get Goodkat to let him hold a gun and he finally got the chance to shoot and he criticized him?! Henry had always been a little confused by the man--he'd saved him, but he was mostly cold, he'd taken him along all across the country, yet he always threatened to leave him at the next stop whenever Henry prodded him. Almost enough to start a complex.

"It was loud! Of course I flinched."

Henry had been born with a _mouth_. The kind that could charm or annoy. Goodkat was neither charmed nor annoyed by him; there was either approval or disapproval. He didn't know why the approval mattered, but then, he didn't know why his parents were dead and a man that had almost shot him as a child had made him his sidekick of sorts.

"It isn't a toy. You use it, you're serious. Once you start, you can't go back. Do you want to go back?"

\---

"Are you a cop?"

Henry thought it was a valid question. The other men with the guns had been bad guys, that was obvious. They'd put a bag over his head and smelled like rotten things. But Goodkat hadn't done any of that.

"No, I'm not a cop."

"You a cowboy then?"

"I'm just Goodkat."

He figured it was probably one of those things that Mom and Dad would sometimes talk about that he didn't quite get, even if he could remember the words. Henry liked words, and how they flowed into each other when people talked. Even bad words, sometimes.

"Are you going to take me to my dad?"

The man waited long enough that Henry almost asked again. He stopped the car on the side of the road and for a moment Henry almost thought that maybe he was one of the bad guys after all. But Goodkat just looked at him.

"Your parents are dead, kid."

He pulled the car out of park then and kept driving. Didn't even turn to look over at him again, even when he started sobbing.

\---

"I don't want to go back. I want to learn."

The response was immediate, and immediately surprising. Goodkat pulled out his own handgun and shot at the target; a lawn ornament, really. Henry realized he'd flinched again. Not only flinched, but closed his eyes.

"You can't be afraid of it. If you're afraid, you die."

Goodkat shot again.

"It isn't just focus; it's detachment. You're here, your target is there. This one isn't alive but when it is? There's no difference."

Several shots in succession, and Henry was starting to get used to the sound almost as much as he was used to motels. He couldn't think of a time they stayed anywhere for long enough to be anywhere else. Maybe he just had to apply that to the sound of gunshots, just like the sight of a gun and knowing that Goodkat always had one were familiar.

"Let me try again."

"No."

"Why not?"

"You're not ready yet. Stand and watch."

The rest of the afternoon he sat, trying not to chatter or ask questions. Trying not to fidget.

\---

They checked into a hotel under the name Smith and Henry waited a whole five minutes before he started asking questions. Question after question in quick succession, quicker than he could think of them. Quicker than Goodkat could answer but that wasn't the point. Henry didn't want to be upset, but he didn't know what to do. His whole world was Mom and Dad and maybe baseball but most of that was gone now. Was he scared? Was he confused?

"Baseball?"

Henry hadn't even realized he'd said anything about baseball in the middle of it. Goodkat was sitting on the hotel generic bed, standing out against the faded bedspread like a sore and smirking. What was he smirking about?

"I like baseball. Dad say--said I had a good arm."

He put his hand in his pocket and felt a watch there, and bit his lip to keep from crying again.

"I hate baseball. Waste of time."

Henry's face fell.

"But how good of an arm do you have?"

\---

The sun was setting by the time they were walking back to the car, yet another nondescript used one that would break down when they went on to a different state. Henry just wanted to say something he approved of, but he'd learned long ago that saying anything was always a risk. Goodkat was a listener and a teller; not a talker.

"So you think that's cool, kid? Being a big man shooting a gun?"

He waited until they were both sitting in the car, on the side of the road where it was parked, and Henry couldn't help but think that Goodkat always did things purposefully like that. Methodically. Important conversations and revelations belonged on the side of the road, next to the ditch. Lesson learned.

"No."

"Then why."

"Because that's what the bad guys have and I want to be able to beat them."

Goodkat laughed.

"Kid, you start playing the game of the bad people and you're going to have to be one of them. You're all in or you're not."

He thought hard about his early childhood, the times when he had one place to stay and two people to stay with. And he realized that even if he was moving around the country with a man that was anything but fatherly, he'd never really lost that sense of security. Just the definition.

"Good people don't want revenge, do they?"

\---

He saw the pun in Goodkat when he finally figured out how to hit targets; imagining the faces of those phantom bad people that took his parents away. Good and bad didn't matter when you were the guy with the gun. Just who didn't flinch.


End file.
